I’m from Tech Support, and I’m here to help

“Good Morning! My name is Roger, and I’m with Microsoft Tech Support. Our Security Monitoring team has detected what appears to be a virus on your computer. Have you have any problems lately?”

I’ve read about these scams for years. Someone purporting to be a Microsoft employee calls you up. There’s a ‘problem’ with your computer. Let’s look around together a few minutes. Yep, look at all those ‘errors’ in your logs.

The caller then asks you to connect to a website to install some kind of software, and invariably, sign up for some ‘protection’ service. These folks can be very convincing.

One of my Raleigh customers got this call last week. She was surprised that they could see all these problems with her computer — the modem for her internet connection had died, and she had been waiting a week for a new one! She wisely hung up and even called the real Microsoft to report it (you can also call the FTC).

Be as suspicious with callers as you are with email:

Don’t visit unfamiliar websites / install unfamiliar programs.

Don’t let anybody ‘connect’ to your computer unless you called them and request it.